In the 57 years Major League Baseball has made it possible to win a postseason series without winning the World Series, the White Sox had only one one in one season — 2005, when they won the whole thing.
That count is up to two, and this series ended the same as the last one, with the White Sox sealing a sweep in Houston’s ballpark.
The White Sox knocked Hunter Brown out of the first inning with a four-run blitz, and when three Astros solo shots narrowed the margin to one, Chase Meidroth regained the ground in the sixth inning with a resounding three-run blast off Bryan Abreu. The White Sox bullpen, which wobbled out of the gate, ended up throwing five scoreless innings to exit Houston as victors.
Meidroth’s clout will probably stand as the defining image of this series, especially since the White Sox barely escaped the previous inning with the lead intact.
Huascar Brazobán entered in relief of Sean Burke with a 4-3 lead in the fifth inning and promptly plunked Cam Smith. He struck out Nick Allen to gain some footing, but a single to Jeremy Peña brought Yordan Alvarez to the plate without a base open.
Will Venable countered with Anthony Kay, who fell behind 3-0 … and still got him out, spotting an outside-corner fastball that Alvarez sliced to Sam Antonacci in left for the second out. Kay then fell behind Isaac Paredes and walked him on four pitches to load the bases. Jose Altuve, who hit one of the three homers off Burke earlier in the game, made Kay throw a fastball strike, but got a well-located changeup on the second pitch, and flied out to right to strand three.
That provided temporary relief, but the White Sox now had to solve their problems on offense, which ground to a halt once Brown left the game. Antonacci grounded out with the bases loaded to start a streak of 13 consecutive batters retired by AJ Blubaugh and Peter Lambert, the prospective Game 3 starter who ended up taking over in the third.
The Sox finally snapped the streak when Andrew Benintendi took a full-count fastball low for a leadoff walk in the top of the sixth. Luisangel Acuña pinch-ran for him and stole second, although the effects were negated when Tristan Peters walked on four pitches. That’s when Joe Espada went to the bullpen for his top right-handed reliever, Bryan Abreu, to face Chase Meidroth.
Initially, the White Sox were going to concede the matchup as Meidroth showed bunt on Abreu’s first pitch. But Acuña and Peters took off on Abreu’s first pitch, which nobody on the Astros anticipated for the kind of incredibly easy double steal the White Sox have been used to allowing. That allowed Meidroth to swing away, and did he ever.
First, he watched two more pitches out of the zone to make it a 3-0 count. He took all the way on a fastball strike, and when Abreu went to the slider on 3-1, Abreu left it over the inner half, and Meidroth uncoiled on it, sending it off the left field wall above the yellow line for a three-run blast that set the White Sox dugout ablaze and allowed White Sox fans to breathe a huge sigh of relief.
Thanks to Jordan Hicks and Erick Fedde, blood pressures remained settled the rest of the evening. Hicks retired all six batters he faced to go 10-for-10 over the two games, and Fedde did the same as the unlikely final pitcher.
The sweep indicated how thoroughly the White Sox outplayed the Astros. Brown came into this game 6-0 in six starts against Chicago, but thanks to a series of line drives and miscues, he departed with only two outs in the first and trailing 4-0.
Sam Antonacci started the game by exploiting a compromised Astros defense. Houston started Alvarez in left field due to Paredes’ knee issue, and Antonacci lined a drive over his outstretched glove in left center for a leadoff double. Kyle Teel then shot a single past a diving Altuve, and the White Sox had a 1-0 lead in just five pitches.
Miguel Vargas followed with a bouncer to third, but Nick Allen’s attempt to smother the hop deflected off him and into foul territory for an E-5. Brown rebounded to strike out Munetaka Murakami, but Andrew Benintendi picked him up with a broken-bat single to center that scored Teel, and then Vargas when an ill-advised throw from center escaped catcher Yainer Diaz. Tristan Peters then got on top of a high fastball for a single to right center that scored Benintendi to make it 4-0.
Brown gave up a single to Meidroth and struck out Braden Montgomery to bring up ninth-hitting Colson Montgomery, but a walk turned over the lineup and ended his night. The move worked, as Blubaugh got Antonacci to ground out to avoid an even bigger disaster.
From there, the Astros offense chipped away. Jeremy Peña greeted Burke with a homer to get Houston on the board, Cam Smith hit a bomb in the second, and Altuve made it three over four innings by dropping one in the Crawford Boxes to make it a 4-3 game.
That said, the adage that solo shots won’t kill you proved correct enough. Burke allowed only one other hit and zero walks while striking out eight, so while the Astros killed his mistakes, there were no multiplying factors. He didn’t quite get the game to the halfway point, but while the Sox used four relievers, everybody will get the next two full days off.
Bullet points:
*The final pitching line plays: 9 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 15 K, 3 HR.
*The Sox once again found production without their biggest bats, as Vargas and Murakami went 0-for-10 with five strikeouts in the middle of the order.
*The Sox were 4-for-9 with runners in scoring position, while the Astros were 0-for-2. They won both the denominator and the numerator.
*The Sox also played errorless ball, with Vargas making up for his Game 1 error by stabbing an Alvarez hot shot as the only defender on the left side.
*Alvarez finished the series 1-for-8 with two strikeouts.